PLEASE NOTE: This is a minimally-edited transcript that originates from a program that uses AI.
Anita Rao
This is Embodied, from PRX and WUNC. I’m Anita Rao.
Ryan Kramer was born via anonymous donor sperm in 19-90, and not long after...he started asking some big questions.
Ryan Kramer
If you have half of your genetic makeup coming from a source that is totally unknown to you. I think it's very natural to feel some level of curiosity about that. And for me it was, uh, immediate and fairly strong.
Anita Rao
Ryan’s interest in his biological family set him on a search that would pave the way for tens of thousands of other people to meet biological relatives — and change his own definition of family.
Ryan Kramer
You take one glance at this person and immediately all of these features and characteristics stand out that are so familiar despite, you know, being a stranger and uh, you just immediately feel this sort of kinship.
Anita Rao
A conversation about searching and what happens when you’re found, just ahead on Embodied.
For as long as he can remember. Ryan Kramer has known that he was conceived with donor sperm. He and his mom had open conversations about it, including that the donor was anonymous. But as Ryan grew up, each new stage of life would beget more questions.
Ryan Kramer
My mom's side of the family is very liberal arts focused, and I was always a STEM kid. Um, and I think as I got older and discovered new parts about myself, physical characteristics, the color of my hair, or interests or hobbies that I had, all these things that obviously didn't come from my mom's side would just kinda add to this sense of growing curiosity.
Anita Rao
Ryan's mom, Wendy sought out as much information as she could from the sperm bank, but those sparse details were not enough.
Ryan Kramer
I always felt like a complete person and like I, I knew who I was, but the curiosity was really driven by where I came from. I think as that curiosity grew, my, my interest in meeting either my donor or, you know, potential half siblings, somebody that shared that 50% of my unknown DNA in common with me just grew and grew.
Anita Rao
This is embodied our show about sex, relationships and your health. I am Anita Rao. More than a million people in the US have used donor sperm in the past three decades, but there's no centralized registry that tracks donors or their offspring. Individual sperm banks also historically promised anonymity. So exactly who donates and how many children are born from each of those donors is murky. This reality led to the situation Ryan found himself in as a child in the nineties, and it would set him on a decades long journey to answer questions about identity, relationships, and the meaning of family. It all started when he was two years old.
Ryan Kramer
I think I had been observing other kids in daycare, preschool and seeing, you know, a, a, a more traditional family with a mom and a dad. And at that time my mom was a, a single mom. So I, I came up to her one day when I was two, and this was, I think a little bit earlier than she had been expecting. And I just blurted out, uh, so did my dad die or what? And, uh, she was a little taken aback at first, and to her credit did a really amazing job explaining in. Terms that a 2-year-old could understand, but were still true. That, you know, she wanted to have a baby and to make a baby, you need a man and a woman. And that, a man that we didn't know had given his part of the equation and, and had helped us out. And that's how I came about. Uh, you know, I was also told that, that we didn't know who he was. And I think at two that was. More than, uh, satisfactory. I was like, okay. And I went back to, you know, playing with trucks or whatever I was doing at the time. And then every year, or you know, times throughout my upbringing where I would become a little bit more curious, I might ask again and we would go into it in a little bit more detail until I really felt like I had the full meaning of what it meant. But I really do credit finding out at such a young age and being told in such a benign way. To my generally neutral, to positive feelings about being donor conceived throughout my life. It was never a negative thing or a secret or a shameful thing. I think that was a, an excellent way to, to start the conversation. So I give a lot of credit to her for that.
Anita Rao
So you mentioned that the donor was anonymous. When were you able to get a little bit more information about who they were and and how did that information sit with you once you got it?
Ryan Kramer
Yeah, so the way my mom describes it, she was married at the time that I was conceived, and so her and her husband. Went to a fertility clinic and there was a woman behind the counter sitting in front of a computer, basically rattling off stats. You know, I've got six foot tall with brown hair and blue eyes. If you want an Irish background or if you want blonde hair, I've got, you know, and so on. And obviously my mom's husband at the time was very uncomfortable with this situation. Basically she said to this woman, this is what he looks like, just match him. And they stood up and left, and that was more or less all the information they ever got. All she knew was after the procedure. A few weeks later, she was pregnant and they really didn't think about it. Very much so. My mom and her husband split when I was very young, when I was less than one. And so it was always, uh, just my mom and I growing up. But I think it was around age three when, um, you know, I was asking more questions about it and who, you know, did we know anything about my donor? And so she called the clinic and explained the situation and they said, oh, you never got the long form. And she was like the long form. No. So at that point they sent us, uh, essentially a donor profile, something on the order of 40 pages with a bunch of kind of generic non-identifying information, so hide and wade and eye color and hair color, and a few essay questions and just a little bit of a glimpse into this person's identity. And so when we got that form, it was really, really interesting for me to sit down and read through it and, and sort of have the. First little bit of light shed on this, this individual who, to that point, had been a total mystery, but at the same time, it really ignited a, a whole bunch of additional questions. So that form for, you know, most of my childhood and upbringing was all I knew about who he was.
Anita Rao
Did you know at that point that you did or didn't have any donor siblings? What did you know about kind of the potential extent of your biological connections?
Ryan Kramer
You know, throughout my childhood, during those periods of curiosity, my mom would also occasionally reach out to the sperm bank in the hopes that maybe a policy had changed or she might be able to talk to a clerk or someone on the phone who maybe would be a little bit more sympathetic, who could possibly, you know, give some information. And during one of those phone calls, she had. One of the people at the, at the sperm bank had basically inadvertently confirmed the existence of other half siblings of mine that were out there. So I think from a very early on, probably age five or six, uh, at that point, we didn't know how many, but we knew there were at least a few other half siblings out there.
Anita Rao
So you kind of hit a dead end with getting information. This is around, you know, we're in the nineties, so kind of before the era of DNA testing, but you were a really precocious child, and when you were 10 years old in the year 2000, you learned about Yahoo Groups. And this sparked an idea for you about how this might help you connect with some of your biological family. Take me back to that time and the group that you made, what you were hoping to find.
Ryan Kramer
Yeah, in the year 2000, this, you know, burgeoning technology that became the internet was around and Yahoo Group started, and at that point we sort of had the idea to start a group for donor families. Not necessarily to try to find my donor or to try to find half siblings or to make matches for half sibling families or like, you know, we, we didn't have any grand aspirations in the beginning. Mostly it was to say, Hey, I'm donor conceived. I'm really curious. Is there anyone else out there who's donor conceived, who's curious as well? And maybe we could connect with them. And so yeah, in the year 2000, we started this little Yahoo group called, uh, the Donor Sibling Registry. It was very slow to get going, I think in the first year. We had maybe a few dozen other people who had just kind of found the group through searching. But once it got enough traction, we started doing a little bit of media to sort of advertise the existence of this group. And from there it just started to snowball. So after we did some local news, it got picked up by some national news and people started coming in droves. And it turned out, uh, I think to some extent it was a real relief to find out that it was very normal to be curious and that there were a lot of other. People out there who are in a similar situation.
Anita Rao
Tell me about how the registry worked when it first started in the early two thousands. Like how exactly did it facilitate matches between people?
Ryan Kramer
Yeah. So when you receive a sperm donation, the way that you identify the donor is just by a donor number. So in my case it was California Cryobank number 10 58. And so, um, in the very early days of the Donor Sibling Registry, it was really as simple as creating a post on our Yahoo group saying, Hey, you know, I'm from, uh, Fairfax Cryobank number 2 61. Is there anyone else out there? And, and then. A few years into the growth of the Donor Sibling Registry, we moved away from Yahoo and created our own database style website where you could make a post with your donor number and if somebody else posted with the same donor number, it would create a match. And that's essentially still how the website works today.
Anita Rao
So it did evolve, as you said, from a Yahoo group into a full-blown website, as well as a nonprofit providing both kind of education and resources to donor families, but also this matching service. And I've heard you and your mom talk a lot about one of the founding principles of it being mutual consent. Contact. Can you tell me a little bit about what that means?
Ryan Kramer
Yeah, very much so. This question comes up quite often is in this situation where you have offspring who are very curious, they should have a right to search and be curious. And then you have these donors who were assured anonymity. And to some extent, I think we should respect their right to anonymity as. Well, and so you get this kind of clash and the question comes up often. You know, whose rights should take priority? My mom and I have always been really big proponents of open donor policies that give children the right to search, the right to have their questions answered, and the right to connect with their donors should that be something that is extremely important to them. So that being said, we also wanted with the Donor Sibling Registry to make sure that we did respect the rights of people who. We're in a a, an anonymous donor situation. And so the whole premise of the DSR is that you come, if you're curious and you make a posting and it's more of a place to be found, you can search and be found. And if you are not curious or you want to remain anonymous or you know you don't wanna participate, you simply don't have to come and you don't have to sign up. So I think the things have changed a little bit in the world with. The advent of consumer genetic testing where really it's not always necessarily completely consensual, whether you're found or not, but at least on the donor sipping registry, the whole paradigm is mutual consent, contact only.
Anita Rao
So we mentioned you being this like incredibly precocious child. You're asking about this identity at age two. Then you and your mom start this thing. It really takes off, it gets tons of attention. You get invited to go on Oprah, you're, you're being really pushed into the spotlight. How were you feeling kind of at that point about your identity and, and what you wanted from this process about family as. Um, this was kind of becoming something so much bigger than maybe how you had imagined it.
Ryan Kramer
Yeah. I think I remember at the time being pretty strongly motivated by the curiosity about my donor and my half sibling. So everything we did related to the donor sibling registry, every media appearance going on. Bra or you know, whatever it was. I was excited to attract attention to the Donor sibling registry so that more people would sign up so that hopefully one day one of those people would be, you know, one of my people. And I think in the meantime, the fact that lots of other families were experiencing matches was hugely satisfying and really, really, I dunno if this is quite the right term to use, but it felt like a great consolation prize at the time for not being able to, uh, make contact with anybody that I was looking for. But yeah. Uh, in the back of my mind I was always, uh, just very much hoping that we would do this interview. This show would air, we'd see this wave of new people sign up to the website and it was just kind of like, fingers crossed. Hopefully someday one of those will be one of my people.
Anita Rao
Just ahead, Ryan finds one of his people you're listening to, embodied from North Carolina Public Radio, a broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can also hear embodied as a podcast. Follow and subscribe on your platform of choice. We'll be right back.
This is Embodied. I am Anita Rao. Ryan Kramer was conceived from anonymous donor sperm 36 years ago. His curiosity about that side of his biological family started when he was super young, long before commercial DNA testing was a thing. So in the year 2000, when Ryan was 10, he and his mom created a Yahoo group called The Donor Sibling Registry. It aimed to help donor conceive children and their families match with potential biological relatives using donor numbers. The group grew in popularity and after a few years became a website and. Nonprofit, but Ryan still couldn't find any of his own family or get answers to the questions he had about his identity. Then in 2003 that started to change.
Ryan Kramer
I was essentially 13 years old. We did a, a, a. An appearance on an, the Oprah Winfrey show. She did a show about donor conceived people, and that was, in many ways, kind of a, a milestone for the DSR. It was so much attention all at once that really, that's when things started to blow up and when a lot of our members started joining and, and the effects sort of snowballed. And in the midst of all that chaos, you have to remember, this is. Just my mom, uh, administering this brand new website in 2003. And we're having, you know, what normally is maybe a member or two here and there signing up, you know, people signing up by the hundreds, uh, wow. In a matter of, you know, minutes and hours. And so it was very chaotic time. Lots of people were writing her emails, Hey, I saw you on Oprah, this, and she's just kind of responding and, and, and trying to keep her head above water with all the, the sort of chaos in the aftermath of this. And she got one email that. Said, was that your Ryan on Oprah today? And in the midst of this chaos, she just responded? Yes. And then a few minutes later, got this email back from this woman that said, I knew it when I saw him. I gave birth to his two half siblings, um, you know, two girls around his age. And I just remember the tone in my mom's voice calling me into the room like. Ryan, you know, like that tone where, you know, when you hear your mom with that tone, you know, you're either in huge trouble or something very exciting is happening. Uh, so I came in and it was, um, it's very difficult to describe the feeling of excitement and elation and joy. I mean, like I said, a lifetime's worth of curiosity to a 13-year-old. Like the search was finally coming to an end. And so I, you know, I was always a very, uh. Loud and outgoing child. But I remember being so excited at the time, we were driving into town later that day, and I just remember hanging out the side of the car window yelling about how excited I was. Oh, um, you know, it's, it's, it's, it would be really difficult to overstate how excited and how meaningful this was for me. But later that day, we heard back from her and she essentially said that she and her husband had not. Told their girls that their donor conceived and that they had no plans to tell them. And at the time that was devastating. Absolutely devastating. 'cause it essentially closed the door on any sort of, you know, potential meeting that we could have. Um. It was, yeah, I was, I was devastated. It was really, really tough, uh, especially at that age and being so frustrated and, you know, just basically going through that roller rollercoaster of emotions in that day. So, you know, over the, over the coming weeks and months, we had lots of back and forth emails with this mom, and she was obviously, I think to some extent wrestling. The emotions and the decision to, to withhold the truth. And, you know, we were able to learn a little bit of information about these girls. And, uh, at that point, to me, some information was better than none. But after a little while, had contact sort of faded and it basically, uh, I went back to, you know, where I was before, back to the search. And so we just continued to put energy into the donor sibling registry and creating these matches for others in the hopes that someday, you know, I might have. Uh, have some luck as well.
Anita Rao
So then eventually you did get a note about a match from a potential sibling herself, a kid named Tiffany, who was also a teenager about your age. Tell me about Tiffany and, and the, the relationship that began to form between you two.
Ryan Kramer
Yeah, that's right. So this was, um, you know, maybe a year or two later we found out about this young woman named Tiffany, who also was, you know, claiming to be donor number 10 58 from California Cryobank. And it was the same sort of excitement. I think at that point. We, I think I knew a little bit better to not get my hopes up immediately, but it was very hard not to. I probably did. And so we started emailing back and forth and she was, in many ways, very, very similar to me. You know, I was age, I think 14 when I first, uh, established contact with her. I was a really accelerated student. So I graduated high school the week I turned 14. And so I was, um, oh my gosh, I was an engineering. Student at CU already by that point. And she told a very similar story that she, you know, was a very early high school graduate and that I was, you know, at the time I was starting my, uh, degree in aerospace engineering and she told me she was, uh, going to pursue a degree in nuclear engineering at the same time. Wow. So just a lot of. Sort of similar threads like that where I was like, okay, this person is probably the real deal. But the big sort of elephant in the room for me was like, I just wanted to, to meet her and see her in person and have a conversation with her and just, uh, look into her eyes and see some of those similarities or some of those genetic traits that I'd been so curious about in myself. But it was pretty clear from. Fairly early on that she had a, a, a good deal of trepidation about making contact with me and that she was also in a situation where her parents basically told her that she was donor conceived, but told her n never to search that you know, your donor's not your father, your. Siblings are not part of your family. And her feelings of curiosity, which I think are very normal and common, were, were not really honored by her family. And I think out of respect to her mom and her, her dad, her non-biological dad, she really didn't want to, she, she wanted to respect what they had told her, which was quite disappointing. So after, you know, a, a number of months of. Talking to her, she still hadn't told her family that she was, uh, you know, had made contact with me, and she was quite nervous about doing that. So we decided, you know, we were gonna be on 60 Minutes around the time and she was gonna, we sort of made a plan. She was gonna sit down with her family and watch the 60 minutes together and then basically tell them that. This guy was her half sibling and that she had been in contact with me and that she wanted to, to continue the contact with me. So, you know, it was weeks of planning and talking about it and leading up to this. And so we were very excited. And so after the show, we just kind of waited with bated breath to hear from her. And we didn't really, and it wasn't until a while later. We eventually heard from her and she said that her family did not react well. She was basically forbidden from having any other contact with me or from searching. Her email and social media was taken away, and that was more or less the last we ever heard from her, which was really. Quite disappointing at the time again, and at that point it was really, yeah, quite devastating and, and difficult to not feel despondent about the situation. Like, yeah.
Anita Rao
I mean, I wanna know how the experience of that disappointment affected your feelings about connecting with other potential siblings and continuing on this search.
Ryan Kramer
Yeah, I mean. Without a doubt, it was crushing. I, I remember just being absolutely devastated by this, but I don't remember it ever having any sort of impact on the feeling of curiosity or the motivation to continue the search. You know, after each period of excitement and then period of, of disappointment, it was like, okay. We'll try again, like back to the search. And that curiosity was so innate and so strong that I think I probably could have tried and failed a dozen or a hundred more times than I don't think it ever would've, uh, shaken the need to continue the search.
Anita Rao
Do you have a sense of what you were hoping for and looking for at that point? Like what you needed to know? You know, looking back,
Ryan Kramer
I'm not sure I knew exactly what I was looking for. I think I, I had a lot of questions that were, you know, looking back now, maybe a little bit juvenile or something that you would expect a teenager or an adolescent to wanna know about, you know, a long lost family member. Like, I just wanna know, did they like the same sort of movies that I liked or Uhhuh? Did they like the same sort of music or did they like mountain biking too? Or, you know, did we have shared interests? So hobbies in common? You know, after we met Tiffany and found that she had had a very similar kind of parallel academic experience, which for me, you know, was quite unique. I didn't know very many people who had followed a path like that. So to know like, oh man, is this like fairly common in my sibling group? I didn't know. And so I think I just had a number of questions and I, I don't think I could have told you at the time, you know, which ones were the most important. I just wanted to ask these of someone. And I think looking back now. It's actually amazing to me how simple it was to satisfy a lot of that curiosity. I needed to look some of these people in the eye and just understand something about, you know, the commonality that we shared and that was about it.
Anita Rao
So you were able to use genetic testing when it became available in around 2004. A DNA testing site contacted you and your mom asking if you'd like to try their service. You said yes. You matched with some distant relatives. After some deep diving, you all were able to identify who. The potential sperm donor was, and then you wrote him an email, I believe you were 15 years old. Could you read an excerpt of that email for us?
Ryan Kramer
Yeah, so this is after we had, you know, experimented with, with DNA testing at the time, the thought of finding not only a specific relative, but anybody through a, a, a. Commercially consumer available. DNA test was sort of unheard of and the thought that we could use this technology to find my donor was also not really on our radar at the time. But, you know, using that information combined with some other information that we had, we were eventually able to figure out, you know, with a pretty good deal of confidence. Who the donor was and a simple Google search gave us an email address, and so I was 15 and after we figured out who we thought he was and his contact information, I think I sat on that for maybe 24 hours or something. Just sort of deciding what I wanted to do. I really did want to respect. Privacy, and I understood that he donated as an anonymous donor, and so I understood that he might not want contact or he might be really offput by the idea of, of people like me coming to contact him. But at the same time, I really did want to, uh, make him aware that I existed and give him the opportunity to reply to me. And so, yeah, here's uh, how I started that email. His name is Lance, and so I said, Lance, where to begin? My name is Ryan Kramer. I'm 15 years old and I live in Netherland, Colorado. After much work, DNA tests, private investigation and public record searching, I believe that I've finally found the man I'm looking for. You may want to sit down for this next part. 15 years ago, my mother was impregnated with a sperm donation from California cryobank donor, 10 58. You and this man I believe are one and the same, which incidentally makes you my father.
Anita Rao
How did Lance respond to that email? You contacting him out of the blue Decades after he had donated thinking that he was donating anonymously.
Ryan Kramer
Yeah, that's right. So the email does go on to say, I wasn't looking for a father, uh, like a father relationship, any responsibilities of a father. I wasn't looking for money. I didn't want him to put me through college or tuition. Like I, I, I wanted to be clear. I wasn't looking for any sort of obligation from him. You know, I had these questions. That I wanted to to answer, and really I was just looking for communication to open a line of contact with him so that I could ask some questions and maybe see a picture of him and you know, maybe meet him someday. And so I sent that email probably one o'clock in the morning. It just came to me. I wrote it and sent it without really thinking about it. I went and woke my mom up at the time and said, I emailed him and she was. Like what? You know, I think she was really surprised, like maybe this was something we would collaborate on or think about, but I just, uh, put my feelings down. I felt very confident, you know, this is, uh, a lifetime's worth of curiosity again at that point. And so I knew what I was asking for and uh, and then sent it out into the ether and then just kind of crossed my fingers and hoped and. A couple of days went by with no response, and I remember feeling that that was quite, I was quite anxious, but at the same time, I really did, like, I, I think I always had a really fairly realistic view of the situation. Like he may not write back, he may not want any contact, but then maybe 48 hours later, um, he wrote back. And Lance is a man of relatively few words. So it was a, it was a relatively short email, but it essentially said, I'm thrilled to be your genetic father. You know, it was a massive relief. He basically said like, I'm glad you contacted me, and yes, I'm, I'm here and I will answer your questions for you. And so. Yeah, it was another period of just absolute joy and elation. And, and that's when we started, started developing this, um, this relationship that we still have to this day. You know, I was a, I think I was a sophomore in college at the time, so I was really curious. I knew he had engineering degrees. I, I think. He and I actually ended up getting the same master's degree. Wow. Not by design. I didn't choose it because I knew that he had it. It was like we just both just sort of naturally gravitated towards the same subject matter. And then, you know, a few months after we first made contact sort of outta the blue, he sent me an email and said, Hey, would you like to come to California and meet me and my parents? You know, my Don. Grandparents, my genetic grandparents, and that was thrilling. I was super excited. I said yes immediately. And so we made a plan and went to California, my mom and I, and met him and his parents and spent the weekend together and it was fantastic. And so that was really sort of, you know, the, the beginnings of, of this relationship that we still have to this day.
Anita Rao
I want to return to the sibling thread of this conversation for a minute. We had these kind of failed attempts that you had made to try to connect with people to be able to develop a relationship. You said that all you really wanted was to just meet a half sibling in person. That was such a deep desire of yours. Eventually. Eventually that did happen. In 2007, a half sibling named Anna found you through the Donor Sibling Registry. You all planned a meetup with your families in New York. Tell me about the experience of meeting a half sibling in person for the first time, something that you had really longed for.
Ryan Kramer
Yeah. That was so exciting. Yeah, like, like I've described at this point, we had had so many sort of near misses and disappointments that when Anna and her family signed up to the donor sibling registry, there was very much this sense of like, okay, here we go again. And I think had learned a little bit about maybe how to temper expectations a bit. But I think it was no less exciting in many ways. So she signed up. I remember my mom calling me into the room with that same sort of tone in her voice. Like, you know, Ryan, something exciting is happening. Uh, and we went in there and looked at her post on the website and the first thing that stood out to us, you know, we saw it's donor 10 58. It's, it's a match. It, we immediately established contact with, uh, with her and her family. I think it was pretty clear right away that, that this was not gonna be another one of these, uh, disappointing scenarios. Like the family was very open with her. They were very supportive of her curiosity. Her relationship with her, you know, her non-biological father was really excellent and she was curious and she wanted to meet me as well. And so, uh, it didn't take long, uh, before we. You know, got together and met and, and arranged a meeting in New York City and we did it as part of a, a TV show for the donor sibling. I think it was Good Morning America sent cameras to be there for the meeting. So we met up in Central Park and, and it was wild. You know, when you, whenever you meet somebody, like even still to this day, no matter how many times, uh. I've been through this experience. When you meet somebody else for the very first time, they're effectively a complete stranger, but they have more or less half of the same genetic makeup that you have, which is an experience that is just really difficult to describe unless you were, you know, a twin separated at birth or something like that. But you just. You take one glance at this person and immediately all of these features and characteristics stand out that are so familiar despite, you know, being a stranger. So it, it could be, you know, physical traits like, um, you know, I think Lance's side of the family has really, really strong. Genetic eyebrows and teeth and, you know, just particular facial qualities that are really, really shared strongly between all of us. And so you take one glance at, uh, at any one of my half siblings and, and it's immediately clear like you would expect we would be full siblings or, you know, even in some cases like fraternal twins, like in, in some cases the resemblance is, is absolutely wild. So you see these right away. But then I think the even more mind blowing aspect is, uh, mannerisms like. You know, when I met my donor Lance, you know, in the first few minutes together, like just walking down the street, you know, we would do this very specific stretch kind of motion, like just kind of a silly mannerism that I'd been doing for my whole life. And then, yeah, he does it. And my mom and I looked at each other like. Oh my God, I do that. Or the sound of the way he laughs is so similar to the way I laugh or the way he walks or carries himself or reaches forward to open a door. Like these things that maybe are a little bit harder to define in words, but when you see it, you know it and uh, you just immediately feel this sort of kinship. And so yeah, meeting Anna, a lot of those things just became apparent right away too. And, and we spent the weekend together and got to know each other and, um. It's really great. One of my friends who is also donor conceived, uh, who also made contact with half siblings through the DSR put it really eloquently, which is that, you know, friends come and go throughout your life. When you meet new people, you have no assurance that you're gonna know them for, you know, a day or a month or a year for the rest of your life. But when you meet. A half sibling or somebody that you share this genetic kinship with, regardless of the, the type of relationship you end up establishing, you really do get the sense that you'll know these people forever or that they will have a special place in your life or a special type of relationship that's, that's sort of different from any other. And so that was my first experience to. To see what that was like. And, and you know, I still have contact with Anna to this day and, and all the other, uh, half siblings that I've been able to make contact with so far. So yeah, really an incredible and unique and enriching experience and I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to do it. Not only then, but you know, in all the times subsequently as well.
Anita Rao
Just ahead, we'll hear what it's like for Ryan to now have more than 30 half siblings. And which of these relationships have become the most meaningful? As always, you can hear the podcast version of the show by following embodied on your platform of choice, and you can find behind the scenes content on Instagram. Find us by searching at embodied WUNC. Also follow us there to learn more about new episodes and get updates about future events. We'll be right back.
This is Embodied. I am Anita Rao. Ryan Kramer was born via anonymous donor sperm. So as a little kid, he knew he had a biological father out there somewhere. He just didn't know who it was. Then in 2005, Ryan became the first donor conceived person to find his parent through DNA testing. He was 15 years old. Since then, Ryan has also connected with more than two dozen half siblings, many of them through the Donor Sibling Registry. It's a website and nonprofit that he co-founded with his mom that matches donor conceived children with their half siblings and biological parents as he discovers more biological relatives. His relationship to that part of his identity has continued to evolve and so has his definition of family.
Ryan Kramer
So in the early days, we really didn't know how many other half siblings were out there, other than that little piece of information that someone at the cryobank let slip, you know, we knew there were maybe three other families out there. But we really had no idea how many there could be. California cryo bank's policy at the time I was born was that they would limit the number of offspring born to any donor. I think their limit at the time was 10. But the reality of the situation, which I think didn't come to light until later on, is that California cryobank much like most of the sperm banking industry. Does not keep accurate records. For the most part, they sell the sperm. They may or may not get a, a report back from the family, the recipient family, as to whether or not they had a, a successful live birth. And they make very little effort to follow up. So in many cases, when they say that they're, you know, attempting to limit making a reasonable effort to limit the number of offspring, it, it doesn't make any sense at all because they really have no idea how many offspring are being created. So we knew there could be, you know, in theory at most, 10, but in practice. Possibly many, many more than that. Yeah. Um, and as the donor sibling registry grew over the years, I think the extent to which that became true was really revealed as the half sibling groups on our website started climbing into the tens and the dozens, and then in some cases over a hundred, you know, from sperm banks where they. Clearly state in their contracts and their policy that they will limit the number of offspring to any one donor to 10. You know, we're having sibling groups with over 200. Wow. So now it was really clear like, oh, there really is no upper limit. There was really no way to know. So in these early days, you know, uh, Anna signed up, we met her. It was very exciting. You know, I established contact with a few more, you know, over those first couple of years, people would sign up. It would be very, very exciting. We'd make plans to meet them as well, and. And then over time, especially, you know, in the last five to 10 years as the proliferation of consumer genetic testing has really grown enormously and people have started finding out either that they're donor conceived or being, you know, driven to the donor sibling registry. Through those means. There's really been an explosion in my group and in many others. And now my sibling group is over 30, I think we're at 31. But ev what feels like, you know, every six months or so, sometimes even more frequently than that. Somebody else gets a 23 and Me Kit for Christmas signs up, realizes their dad is not their dad, and kicks off this search and then, you know, inevitably ends up on the donor sibling registry or we, you know, find them in the, in the 23 and Me Relative Finder database, you know, whatever it is. And so I think in, in many ways it's still very exciting to find, to have siblings, like always growing this part of my family and, and meeting new people that you have this type of kinship with and getting to share experiences and like, it's always interesting and it's always exciting, but it's definitely different now to the point where, you know, I have kind of a, a, a boilerplate welcome message to our Facebook group. And it's like, you know, you're 10 58, join the club. Uh, there's a bunch of us here. And you know, it's, I have to remind myself sometimes that. These new folks just found out they were donor conceived. Their world, in many cases, their sense of identity, their family has been turned upside down. And this is, you know, shocking and earth shaking to them. And so really trying to treat that with sensitivity. But for me, like it's decades of, of establishing this type of contact and it's kind of, uh, no big deal now, you know, it's still fun and exciting, but it really is, uh, it's not nearly as, it doesn't carry the same weight that it used to.
Anita Rao
So the landscape has changed so much since you and your mom started the Donor Sibling registry. Obviously the proliferation of commercial DNA testing. Has changed how quickly and easily people can find people there related to, but there's still not a lot of regulation of the sperm donation industry. There's no national sperm donor registry, so sites like yours and DNA sites are kind of where people are turning to, to make these connections from where you sit at this point in your journey. What are some of the resources that you wish were out there to support sperm donor kids through this process of kind of trying to make sense of who they are and, and, and what information they might need about their biological family?
Ryan Kramer
Yeah, sure. I think most people would be pretty shocked to learn just how unregulated the donor sperm and egg industry is. I think most people assume that when you know a. Cryobank says we, you know, limit the number of offspring to any given donor to 10. That that is a limit that is enforced by some sort of law or regulation. You know, this is after all a medical service. And so the thought that this might be regulated by the FDA or some other, uh, government entity, I think would be a fairly reasonable conclusion to draw. But at least in the United States, it is. More or less completely unregulated. There are a few minor regulations for the recruitment of new donors that generally have to do with STD testing. Some genetic testing is required some of the time. But it, there is very little enforcement, there's very little incentive to, uh, adhere to the regulations and there is a very powerful lobbying force in the donor industry to try to keep it that way. It's a very profitable industry and any sort of regulation, you know, potentially cuts into that profit. And so what that means is, yeah, a lot of broken promises about half sibling groups. I think the, the, the number of half siblings to any one donor is. A huge problem. You know, just the issue of consanguinity so that the probability that two of these people will meet and get married and have children without knowing it. You know, in the past it used to be laughed off as so unlikely that it's not worth worrying about or would never happen. But we have more anecdotes than I could possibly count. On the donor sibling registry of half siblings meeting each other without being aware or, you know, going to the same college and ending up in the same class together. So it's certainly a risk. I think also there's just issues around the psychological effects of it. It never really bothered me, but a lot of people have reported this feeling that. You know, when you discover you're part of a, a sibling group of hundreds, it makes them feel sometimes somewhat commoditized in a way. Yeah. And I think that that's totally fair. And then as well, just because the, the health profile that they collect from a donor at the time he donates, which is usually in or around college age, you know, an 18 or 19-year-old. Kid is normally quite healthy. He donates children with his sperm can be made for, for decades into the future. So we get one snapshot of his health profile. But suppose he develops a very serious hereditary disease, you know, when he's 25 or when he's 30. Now if you have sibling groups in the hundreds, we're talking about an epidemic potentially. So the, the, the issues are numerous. So there are many, many things that we would like to see done better in the, in the donor industry, and we would love to see regulation put in. There's been a lot, a lot of resistance. We've made a number of attempts over the years to try to work with lawmakers to introduce that, but the, the lobby in the, in the cryobank industry, like I said, is very powerful. What we would love to see though, is, uh, you know, just for starters, accurate record keeping. I think most people are shocked to learn that. The records kept in the, the bull semen industry for creating, you know, prize winning, uh, bucking bulls is much, much more rigorous and regulated than it is, uh, in, you know, the human sperm industry. Yeah. So even just the mandate to. Keep accurate records, how many children are being born, and we need to make sure that we can contact them. So if a, a piece of important medical information does arise at some point, that there's a way to disseminate that information to the people who it, it would matter to. And, uh, I think we would also really love to see an end and a, a, a full ban on. Bone insemination that is completely anonymous. So this idea that we're still bringing children into the world with the potential to never have this curiosity satisfied, which to many people is very, very important, I don't think is really totally ethical. And you know, there are a number of other countries where anonymous sperm donation has been abolished. I think we can do donor insemination in an open way, in an ethical way, but the, the move to do it in the United States has been quite slow. But that's just to name a few some of the things that I think are really important that at, at the very least we should be talking about, if not eventually regulating.
Anita Rao
So you have been on this journey for a long time. You have built many relationships with folks along the way. Which of those do you feel like have been the most kind of formative and important to you, that have really, that really kind of withstand this, uh, the decades that you've been on this identity search process?
Ryan Kramer
Yeah, it's a great question. I have had this, you know, wonderful opportunity to, to make these connections with a, a number of people. Like I've established contact with dozens of half siblings. I've met in person. I'm not even sure the number offhand, but some, somewhere around 10. And then I've met my donor as well, and his parents, my biological grandparents, and, and a number of his extended family as well. So. I think each of those relationships is really unique and sort of difficult to define, at least using the terminology of maybe standard familial relationships. So does my donor feel like dad to me? Certainly not. Like I don't call him dad. We're on a first name basis. He didn't raise me, you know, he provided the genetic material and I met him when I was 15, so he doesn't feel like dad, but at the same time. You know, somebody who is, who you share that genetic link with, who you know is older than you and looks a lot like you, like in many ways, he feels a lot like, at least like a biological father. Um mm-hmm. And so I think the fact that I met, met him when I was, uh, you know, an adolescent and have built this relationship with him mostly as an adult. Now I think he feels more like a friend or maybe an uncle. It's not exactly like any other type of relationship. That I've ever had. So it makes it a little bit difficult to define. But I think the, of all these relationships, the ones that maybe have been the most surprising and meaningful are the relationship that I developed with his parents, my biological grandparents, which I think in many ways feels or has felt. A lot more like a traditional grandparent and offspring relationship. Particularly my biological grandmother was so overjoyed to get to meet me. You know, Lance didn't have any children of his own and neither did his brother, so she didn't have any grandchildren, and I think. For her, it was as exciting as it was for me. And so we built this really beautiful relationship over a number of years and you know, sadly she passed away a few years ago, but my biological grandfather is still alive and I still keep in contact with him and he's. Coming with Lance to my wedding in October and uh
Anita Rao
Oh, that's amazing.
Ryan Kramer
And it's great. Yeah. So I think, you know, as a kid this, this persistent curiosity about my donor and my half-siblings was always there, but I never really gave much thought to what it would be like to meet my grandparents as well. Yeah. Or you know, my other extended family members. And for me, that has been probably the most surprising and enriching aspect of all of this.
Anita Rao
Well, we talked earlier about how when you started the search, you, you weren't exactly sure how to articulate what you wanted to find. Now at this stage, do you have a better sense of what that is and, and do you feel like you found it?
Ryan Kramer
Yeah, absolutely. The first time I met Lance, you know, we flew to California. We met in a hotel lobby. My mom and I were there. I was, uh, you know, a pretty high strung teenager to begin with, but I was a ball of nervous energy. Every time the automatic doors would open, somebody would walk in, we'd be like, is that him? Is that him? And eventually this guy walked in and looked just like me, and we were like, oh my God. And, you know, went up and shook his hand and just. You know what, under any other circumstance, it might've been very awkward. Uh, at that moment we just kind of like shook each other's hand and just took maybe five or 10 seconds to just look at each other like, whoa, wild. This is completely wild. And even then, in those like first few moments of ever having met him, I just felt this really ineffable sense of relief come over me. Like it's pretty hard to describe having carried this. Curiosity with you for your entire life up to that point, and having spent so much energy on this search and just this sort of desperation to know, to shake the guy's hand and look in his eyes and see what he looks like and feel so many of those questions in my mind just being answered all at once, this incredible weight was lifted. And so yeah, after the weekend we were, you know, in the rental car, I think on the way back to the airport. And I just said something to my mom along the lines of just like, like, that's it. Like I, I am completely satisfied. Like I, I feel almost weightless, you know, in this context at least. So I think looking back, I didn't know really explicitly what it was. I knew I wanted to search and I wanted to be found, and I wanted my extended family members to know that I was out there and that I wanted to make contact with them, but I didn't, I don't think I ever expected how. Sort of immediate, that sense of relief would be once I met them, it was, um, yeah. At this point, like, kind of funny to say now, shockingly simple to make me feel Yeah. Completely content with the whole situation.
Anita Rao
How has this journey changed how you think about and define family?
Ryan Kramer
Great question. It's hard to say because. You know, I've known that I was donor conceived from such a very young age. You know, I, I don't remember a time where I didn't know that I was donor conceived, and I think my family was a little bit non-traditional in the sense that. It was just my mom and me, and I don't have a, a big family outside of that. And so I think my family has always been defined by that kind of core unit. But as I've been able to grow my extended family, my extended donor family by, you know, meeting Lance and his side of the family and meeting my half siblings. I think in many ways those people do feel like family to me. And it's sort of a different sense of family, but it is family. And I think the experience also has just shown me the many ways that family can be defined and that it's totally up to each individual. So sometimes half siblings will come together and meet and instantly feel a bond that feels like full siblings, like they knew each other their whole life, and instantly become, you know, a, an immediate. And big part of each other's lives and have relationships that, you know, persist for the rest of their lives as though they are full siblings and, and grew up together or whatever it may be. And a lot of kids, uh, you know, a lot of these half siblings establish contact when they're much younger than I was. So sometimes they meet their half siblings when they're, you know, too young to talk. And so those people are always a part of their lives. And so in many ways they do feel like a lot more like a traditional. You know, maybe something like a first cousin or somebody that you were related to that doesn't grow up in the same household as you, but that you still consider a, a, a big part of your family. So I think if anything, this experience has just taught me that what defines a family is not set in stone. It really is up to all of us to define. And depending on your circumstance, you may see it very differently and whatever it is, like that's okay.
Anita Rao
Ryan Kramer, thank you so much for the conversation today and for sharing your story. I so appreciate it.
Ryan Kramer
Hey, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much.
Anita Rao
You can find out more about Ryan Kramer and the Donor Sibling Registry at our website, embodiedwunc.org. You can find all episodes of Embodied the Radio show there and subscribe to our weekly podcast. You can also find behind the scenes and bonus content for our show by following us on Instagram. Our handle is at EmbodiedWUNC. Today's episode is produced by Kaia Findlay and edited by Amanda Magnus. Wilson Sayre also provided editorial guidance. Nina Scott is our intern, and Jenni Lawson, our technical director, Sean Roux engineered and mastered this episode. This program is recorded at the American Tobacco Historic District. North Carolina Public Radio is a broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I'm Anita Rao.